Faust 2.0

 

German culture and traditions are an intrinsic part of Europe’s History. As Europe may not be understood without Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Balzac, Macchiavelli, Dumas, Locke… it could not either without Goethe, one of whose latest works was the story about Faust.

This is the story of a deal… an agreement, if you will… or in modern language, a Strategic Alliance. Faust was given 24 years of unlimited happiness by Mephistopheles in exchange of his immortal soul for eternity.

Immortal souls are often represented in art like auras or halos around their owners… Immortal souls which constitute the essence of their owners, like state-of-the-art products constitute the souls of leading technology companies.

Recently one German-led company has allowed its German head to sell off a significant portion of its immortal soul, or halo, in exchange of having its new partner serving as exclusive agent to HP for certain Universal Communications (UC) solutions. Probably the same way as Mephistopheles was the agent of Faust to grant the latter the appropriate deliverables for his ultimate happiness.

We do not really know what is included in the definition of happiness for our new version of Faust, but in fact it has not proven any kind of happiness to HP shareholders so far, as much as Faust’s original happiness did not really mean any happiness at all to poor Gretchen.

And we do not know either for how long this so-called happiness will last… Despite the original legends stipulated 24 years, our personal bet is that Faust 2.0 may enjoy 24 months, or eventually 24 weeks…

 

Technorati Tags: halo,hp,apotheker,polycom,uc,universal communication,faust,goethe,mephistopheles

Sultans of suing

 

We are sure that if we mentioned Dire Straits, every body would recall its unique style, mainly driven by lead singer and composer, Mark Knopfler. Some people consider him the best guitar player ever, and his live performances all over the world are memorable. Sultans od Swing, Tunnel of Love, Telegraph Road, Gold…Many hits come to our minds, but from them all, it is the famous duet with Sting, Money for Nothing, what draws our attention more, together with Private Investigations.

Buzz around another Mark comes back. The Mark Hurd again has bounced up again in the press, as some additional documentation around the fishy Fisher has come to light. Beyond an inappropriate relationship between hard Hurd and fishy Fisher, it looks as if hard Hurd disclosed confidential information to the latter. So fishy Fisher seems to be getting a second 15 minutes of glory Andy Warhol said everybody deserved. However, being represented by the famous attorney Gloria Allred, it appears to us that fishy Fisher has had to devote many more than a mere 15 minutes to the “Gloria” to just get again 15 minutes of “glory”… Not sure this is a good ROI, frankly.

As it is already well known by those who have followed the case, hard Hurd settled private whatever issue fishy Fisher had with him. This happened before he was fired by the HP Board, and likely was one of the mean reasons precisely to lose trust in the guy, and ultimately show him the door. The private settlement included an undisclosed amount of dollars to be paid by hard Hurd to fishy Fisher, cost which simply adds up to all other costs hard Hurd has had (including the intangible impact on his family and reputation) for not having thought it twice before behaving like a hormonally unbalanced chimpanzee during mating seasons.

Although Big Mouth Larry quickly came to the rescue, and saved for him the match ball against hard Hurd, we would still question if all the cost he’s taken was really worth it. Is hard Hurd any better personally and professionally than he was at the time in which praise and success were a constant in his service record?

Again that “Money for Nothing” tune in our heads, as we recall part of its lyrics: “Money for nothing, and your chicks for free…” Indeed the private settlement was something hard Hurd was perfectly ready to afford, and certainly big money for fishy Fisher. Certainly “money for nothing” for hard Hurd, given the ROI he got, though this time the chick was not for free precisely, was she?

After all the “private investigations” after the affair, maybe Mark (Knopfler) could eventually consider legal action against Mark (hard Hurd) for copyright infringement by the latter. Private Investigations and Money for Nothing have been in billboards and hitlists for years already. Just to keep lawyers busy, you know, as suing is starting to become a tradition for hard Hurd, we’d say.

By the way, if Knopfler really gets to legal matter, he could as well include copyright infringement about Sultans of Swing. At the end of the day, hard Hurd is really becoming one of the Sultans of “Suing” lately. True or not?

Technorati Tags: HP Board,HP,HP Way,Mark Hurd,Jodie Fisher,Ray Lane,Larry Ellison,Oracle,Management,Dire Straits,Sting,lawsuit

Caesar’s wife

 

Before becoming Consul of Rome, Julius Caesar was appointed Pontifex Maximus. He was appointed head of state religion. At that time, he was married to Pompeia, granddaughter of former dictator Cornelius Sulla. Thus, Pompeia was the head of state religion too, at least in matters related to women, in those years. Pompeia was Caesar’s second wife.

Some time after Caesar’s appointment to the job, Pompeia, as his wife, hosted the Festival of the “Bona Dea” (“the Good Goddess""), only for women attendance, to which men were forbidden to participate.

One of the start up politicians of the time, Publius Clodius Pulcher, disguised himself as a woman and entered the venue, apparently with the intention of seducing Mrs Caesar.

Not really producing any evidence of any wrongdoing, the episode was seized by Julius to demand divorce from Pompeia under the argumentation that “my wife ought not even to be under suspicion”. The real reason behind this break up and divorce were much more political, as politics of the time was mainly driven by family relationships worked out by marriages. Caesar was already deep into politics by that time. Historians strongly suggest he already had his next marriage (ie political alliance) in mind in his quest for power.

We have read the recent article in Fortune which analyses more in depth the story behind Mark Hurd ’s departure from HP a few months ago. Quite detailed and thorough.

Detailed enough to imagine a nice story.

In a given point in time, after having divorced its previous companion, the HP Board married Mark Hurd as the new CEO. In a certain point in time, Mark decided to have Festivals with other top executives from potential customers. Of course, those festivals were very exclusive, discreet, and reserved for the attendance of VIPs only.

A relatively unknown would-be starlet, Jodie Fisher, was hired by HP so as to greet guests to those festivals, and eventually supervise Mark’s agenda, ensuring he spent enough quality time with each person in the festival. Necessarily she herself spent a lot of time with Mark, with or without witnesses.

Not really producing any evidence of any violation of HP’s harassment policy, the episode was seized by the board to demand divorce from Mark… pity the HP PR spokespeople failed to make the historical parallelism. It would have been fun.

Still, though HP was not totally clear about the story, probably in the hope of letting it pass as fast as possible, smart journalists like those at Fortune open the door to details. A mere matter of trust, we may conclude after reading his article. The HP Board lost trust in Mark, even beofre anybody else did, even with no proof nor evidence at that time.

We agree that for any company, its CEO “ought not even to be under suspicion”. They in fact are an asset of the company they work for, aren’t they?

There is still, however, an interesting open question after the story. As the Festival’s episode was an excuse for Caesar to divorce Pompeia, a necessary step in his political career and quest for power, were there any quests for power behind the ousting of Hurd? We have no idea, but it would be interesting, in our opinion, to investigate a bit the likely candidates to marry the HP Boards at the time, and like enchanted frogs or toads, transform themselves into princesses or princes.

Technorati Tags: Mark Hurd,Carly Fiorina,HP,HP Way,Ray Lane,HP CEO,Management

 

Questions? Ask Mark

 

The Chosen One has apparently declined to attend the oracle’s party… Too bad, we think.

People have a remarkable tendency to talk about famous individuals and celebrities, particularly if the gossip around is not related to an immaculate reputation. Mass media are made by people, and addressing people. They are not an exception. And if someone with the fame and reputation of Big Mouth Larry finger points someone in particular, that person is ultimately screwed.

HP is claiming that the Chosen One would be getting distracted from his new duties as CEO. Well, a guy born in Germany, educated in Israel, living in France, now moving to California, having been able to reach the CEO job at SAP, enjoying a team of executive assistants and backed by smart people leading the different businesses HP is made of, speaking five languages (one of them German, another one Hebrew, which is written “backwards”) can live with that for a few weeks, we think.

HP’s argument sounds weak. And a poor defense is sometimes equivalent to a strong offensive from the enemy. A weak defense is just providing ammunition to the Pontifex Maximus. Not showing up defaults to the Pontifex being right, and unwillingness to assume responsibilities after having left his former employer. We agree the Pontifex is not really proving elegant at all, and his style matches, in our opinion, much more the one you see in Gangs of New York than an educated discussion. But precisely for that, we would not advise to give a poor excuse to stay off.

If the Chosen One is innocent, he should actually leverage the opportunity to demonstrate his innocence, particularly in a case like this one, where Big Mouth Larry is providing a hell lot of free publicity.

Standing up as well can have the total opposite effect than the one insistently sought by the Pontifex Maximus: Strong leadership and principles. Something that, by the way, HP badly needs. If the Chosen One wants to show he cares for his new company, he should think of his reputation as an asset he is not the sole and single owner of. His reputation and his style is as well an asset of whatever company he works for in a given point in time.

Keeping the cleanest possible reputation is, therefore, something he accepted owing to his employer and his fellow employees since the moment he signed his contract and assumed responsibility. Step up, Léo. You are obliged to do so to yourself, your family, your business partners, your customers and, of course, the employees you lead. In case you had questions, Léo, you can always give Mark Hurd a call about the topic.

  

 

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Technorati Tags: apotheker,phyllis hamilton,lawsuit,trial,larry ellison,management,hp way,hp,oracle,ceo,sap,tomorrownow,copyright

Utterly unfair

 

People like money. People want money. In the name of money, crime has flourished here and there. So who would be surprised to read that people want “their” money back? This is applicable to HP employees, and to anybody else in the world, whether they are employees, self entrepreneurs of retirees.

It seems quite obvious a conclusion. Still, it deserves some comments, as the way this has been written looks a bit too simple a view.

We think they deserve it. We agree with the conclusions at the end of the article, but not for the same simplistic rationale. The reference article just says that since economical results for HP have recovered, salaries should be restored and that’s it.As well, the article generalizes too much.

If we look to the official memo to employees at HP, we see a couple of items that have not been explained much in detail in the online report:

First: Salary reductions were not applied to total earnings by employees with variable salary. Just to base pay. What means that the cut was smaller than it looked.

Second: As these cuts have to be compliant with local regulations should there be any, in many countries in the world these reductions are simply non-effective, as local legislation protects salaries in a way that they cannot be reduced even if the consent of the employee is granted.

We are not going to discuss that cutting salaries was not a technically correct measure. It was one of the valid choices HP had to address the economical situation of the time. Indeed it was. And, as long as it complied with local regulations, it was legal to use it.

Now, having said this, we will try to go beyond, and imagine the ultimate target. The guys deciding to take this option (reduce salaries) were guys whose total earning from HP mainly came not via their own base salaries, but proportional to the value of shares. So increasing the value of the shares was their primary target. Not, as presented to the employees, was it about competitiveness and so forth.

There is only one way to increase share value significantly in the short term: Increasing profits. To increase profits, there are only to ways to do it: Either increasing revenue beyond expectations keeping costs in check, or to reduce costs significantly. From these two possibilities, it is kind of obvious that the second one is the easiest.

We believe this was the ultimate intention of the board. Just make sure the market understood they were slashing costs, and therefore increase shares value. Nothing else.

We base our opinion on the wording of the communication to HP’s rank and file employees. Messy, at some point, and potentially unclear for the average employee, who has by no means the slightest individual influence in results, and gets the explanations under the apparent “share-of-the-pain” by managers, who pretend their salaries’ cuts are even bigger than theirs.

Average employees might get lost in all the technical explanations, but what they know is that their cost of living is not paid with percentages. The greengrocer’s, the butcher’s, utilities’, insurance, schooling for kids and a long list of daily expenses are not paid on percentages, but on counting dollars. And though a 20% cut on Top execs base salary may sound big, if (this is a big “if” indeed) shares value performance means a massive payment to them, the ultimate impact is ridiculous in top exec’s earnings. As documented before, a 20% cut in former HP CEO Hurd’s earnings in 2009 roughly meant $290,000 out of more than $42,000,000, what basically proves the point. Who would care for 20% of base salary, or even 100%, if shares value can mean 30 times as much?

Not elegant at all. It simply cannot be imagined that such execs dare that much to add insult to injury. At the end, it could be even thought that they are making their millions not at the expense of competition, or by fair play in the market. They were making their earnings out of employees that supposedly are always declared to be “the most important asset” in the company whatsoever. But nothing different should have been expected, we’d say if we review recent posts from ours too.

The good news for HP? Léo Apotheker could not have found a better opportunity in the beginning of his tenure to gain a solid support basis from his more than 300,000 troops.

The skeptical view? Léo Apotheker’s income is based on shares value as much as Hurd’s was. What basically means he could be driving HP the same way as Hurd did.

The bad news? If things went bad for HP, it would behave like any other company does when targets are not met: “The most valuable assets” are sold out.

Technorati Tags: leo apotheker,hp,hp way,mark hurd,management,employee

The most from all of them

 

Successful leaders often rely on other successful leaders form the past, learn from them, and eventually follow them.

Businessmen are as well leaders, and we have seen, heard and read a lot about Mark Hurd, who seems to have been able to draw a lot of attention on him in the last months.

From certain points of view he has a successful career, and he does not seem to escape from the main thesis of this post, as we have noticed in his behavior some great historical characters he probably is following.

George Washington, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, as delivered in his funeral oration.

Thomas Jefferson: 3^rd  President of the United States, builder of the Democratic Party,  One of the Founding Fathers.

Abraham Lincoln,  who saved his country from breaking apart during American Civil War, and signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution forbidding slavery.

Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury of the United Sates. He established the Bank of the United States.

Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United Sates, tough and hard, a clear dominator of his time, reshaped Democratic Party.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States, war hero in American Civil War, commander in chief of the Union Army.

Benjamin Franklin, probably the most influential of the Founding Fathers.

Great men they were, great Americans, according to History, and it should not surprise at all they might have become role models for Mark. It would be consistent with Mark’s character and personality that he wanted to get the most of them. We think he will, come what may.

 

As a side note, it could be possible that readers of this post are not familiar to the portraits displayed above. In order to get the audience of this post more familiar to this great American characters, we display below more popular depictions of them, in the same order as above.

  

 

The “HP Way” at Oracle?

 

So here we got the guy haranguing his new army…

The gesture in the picture seems to be as if he were explaining the kind of seat he was using that very moment, by the way, though probably this could be subject for a different discussion. Still, please note the pointing finger IS NOT the middle one, which probably is reserved for the exclusive use of his boss (oh yes, THE man has a boss…)

Still, the picture portrays what we could consider his style, doesn’t it?

And, consistent and straightforward as his reputation tells him to be, he might carry it from the beginning to the end.

As a matter of fact, his career at HP does not differ much from his predecessor’s Fiorina (and could as well potentially be Apotheker’s) from the perspective that both Hurd and Fiorina, consistently enough, ended at HP the same way they started. That is, “fired with enthusiasm”.